Core Summary The bioinformatics core will serve as a data clearinghouse, offering standardized quality assurance, sequence data handling and visualization to all four projects of this grant. By doing so it will ensure compatible and consistent data formats, parameter optimization and centralized storage. Existing UMMS bioinformatics pipelines will be optimized to provide and standardize read alignment, alignment processing (peak calling, transcript assembly, small RNA mapping, etc., enrichment analysis (Gene Ontology enrichments, etc.), and dataset integration (e.g. differential expression of piRNAs in different conditions). The centralized storage, processing and analysis of project data will thus significantly enhance integration between all four project components. Relevance The services provided by the Bioinformatics Core (Core C) are essential to research proposed by all four Projects. The core will provide storage, quality control, and preliminary analysis of high-throughput data from the three experimental projects (I-III), and make this data available to the computational project for in depth study (Project IV).